Inherit the Wind

With the rising costs of fossil fuels, government tax incentives, and wider awareness of the problems of global warming, there is little wonder that the wind energy market is building.

The movements of wind and nature itself have fascinated Steve Apfelbaum all his life. Thirty years ago he began a business—Applied Ecological Services, Incorporated—to focus on large landscape-restoration projects.The firm has grown in size to include some 110 employees in five offices across the country. Apfelbaum’s home and the offices of his company are energy efficient and environmentally friendly. But it was 9/11 that spurred him to do even more. He had been visiting a client in the World Trade Center Towers just two weeks before that fateful day. So he was particularly affected by the unfolding news when, back in his home state of Wisconsin, he sought to make sense of the chaos. “I had to do something,”he recalls. “I had to do something with my community, something physical, and something for our environment.”Apfelbaum had been nurturing ideas and researching wind generators for at least two decades, and so he acted by moving forward on his ideas. Four years later, a 20 kW Jacobs wind turbine captures the energy and nuances of the wind coursing 120 feet over ...